In My Life - George Harrison/The Beatles

Chapter Thirteen: Blonde

July 1957

"Come on, Con, hurry up," Cilla sighed, bored, leaning against the bathroom counter as Connie scrubbed her left hand in the wash basin.

"She won't," Florence muttered as she stood by the mirror, re-braiding her long brown hair. "D'you want a paper towel?"

Connie nodded, lifting her hand out from under the tap as Florence handed her a towel, drying her hand and holding it up to the two girls with a frown. Both Cilla and Florence leant round to look, both of them biting their lip and looking between each other.

This had become some weird sort of ritual for the girls. As a natural left hander, Connie could never quite wrap her head around why some of her teachers would punish her for using her preferred hand for writing. It wasn't an enforced rule that she be right handed, or at least it wasn't anymore, but most of her teachers were quite old fashioned when it came to writing, especially her English teacher who'd been known to cane her for using her left hand. If he even saw the telltale smudges on her left hand, it didn't matter if she was struggling through trying to work her right hand, she would still get punished, so she made sure to at least try and remove the evidence. 

"I really don't fancy a bollocking from Mr Stewart today," Connie moaned, remembering the last time their English teacher had caught her writing with her left hand. It had been six of the best ones, and she didn't want them again.

"You could just use your right hand," Cilla suggested with a shrug.

"Cill, she can't even write her name with her right hand," Florence reminded her. "It's actually quite funny, innit, that you want to be a writer but yet you can't even write like most people,"

"Paul's left handed too and he says it's the same over at the lad's school," Connie told them both without looking at them, instead focused on pulling her jumper sleeve over the smudges. "He had to restring his guitar a few weeks back so he could actually play it properly,"

"Yeah I remember, you rang me up ranting about how he was tuning it all night in the bathroom," Cilla reminded her, making Florence laugh.

That was when the bathroom door slammed open and in walked two other girls. They both had long blonde hair, though Connie could tell that neither of them were natural blondes. She really hated the trend of girls dying their hair to match the colour she had naturally, ever since it was made popular by some actress. What she hated more though was the male reaction to blonde hair. Paul was always going on about how much he loved girls with blonde hair - "except you, Lennie," he'd always say, far too quickly - and although George would stay quiet on the matter she knew he agreed. Even John shared the opinion, being rather crude about his preferences with girls to the extent that if Connie didn't know him she'd have punched him for being so rude.

Those girls wouldn't have been his preference, however, Connie could tell as soon as they entered the room. She often found herself doing that out of habit as horrible as it was, comparing the girls at her school to the sort of girls her cousin went on about. Paul might have liked them as they were undeniably pretty, but Connie couldn't imagine herself feeling overly thrilled if he brought them round to her house. There was something about them that Connie just didn't like. She knew they went with the popular crowd, and they somehow managed to get away with wearing their skirts shorter than uniform codes permitted, but there was a look in their eyes that Connie didn't trust. Maybe it was something to do with how both of them seemed to be much better off than Connie. The two gave off a strong middle class vibe, one that intimidated Connie ever so slightly, not that she would ever admit that. However, her suspicions were furthered only when the taller one flashed her a smile that was far from genuine.